


The Pining-Plant

by eugyne (AreteNike)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Mutual Pining, hanahaki, hanahaki is a weird space fungus yeet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-31
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-07-04 19:57:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15848304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AreteNike/pseuds/eugyne
Summary: Pidge takes a moment to stop and smell the roses, and it's all downhill from there.





	The Pining-Plant

**Author's Note:**

> wrote this for the pidge ship zine!!!

Pidge hops out of her lion and drops easily to the jungle floor. Her mission is simple: get to the terminal, download the data, walk back out of the jungle. Easy.

This is probably why, even with nothing better to do, the only one keeping her company on the comms is Lance.

"I'm heading in," she informs him, just for the hell of it.

"Don't die," he says, and she rolls her eyes even though he can't see them.

"I won't die, Lance."

"Just making sure!" he says cheerfully. Ass. Really, her heart could've picked anyone else to crush on.

She checks her map as the green lion wishes her luck with a cheerful rumble—okay, at least Lance isn't her only company. He's certainly the noisier of the two, though.

It's not _far_ to the terminal but it's tough, sweaty going; she wields her bayard like a machete, hacking a path through the brush where she can't just climb or wriggle through. She stops halfway there for a break and double-checks that the air here is breathable before she takes off her helmet to cool off and get a break from Lance's incessant chatter.

Instantly she gets a whiff of something very familiar and so unexpected she almost drops her helmet. She sniffs again; it smells like _Lance,_ so accurately and strongly that she actually glances around to make sure he's not somehow standing next to her.

He's not, of course, but her eye catches on a waist-high cluster of heart-shaped flowers nearby, brilliant white and red against the green of the forest. She leans in to sniff them, gets a noseful of pollen, and sneezes, but the overpowering scent confirms they're the source.

"Gesundheit," says Lance when she puts the helmet back on.

"Thanks," says Pidge with a sniffle. "Lance, there's a flower here that smells like you."

There's a pause.

"Oh, really?" he says, _sort of_ in his "flirting voice" but with a very obvious edge of confusion, and Pidge realizes what she's said.

"Yeah, it smells like heartbreak and dirty socks," she adds quickly, thankful he can't see her blush. No way is she gonna admit she thinks he smells good. That's just weird.

"Rude," says Lance with a mock gasp. She snorts but doesn't say anything—she's embarrassed herself enough for now.

Moving on. She adjusts her helmet to make sure no more suspicious smells can enter and gets back to the trudging-through-the-jungle thing. The residual pollen tickles her throat and she coughs a couple times on the way—which is unpleasant in a tight helmet, but she'll live—but she gets to the terminal in its old, overgrown outpost and the download goes smoothly.

She sees the strange flowers again on the way back out and vaguely considers taking one, but decides it's probably better she doesn't.

"Are you okay?" Lance asks when she coughs again climbing back up into her lion.

"Fine," she croaks, and sets herself into the pilot's chair. "Just allergies or something."

"Maybe you should ask Coran about it when you get back."

Go through all that fuss for something that'll go away on its own by tomorrow? Not a chance.

"I'll be fine," she says, and leaves the planet.

* * *

So the thing is, it's been a couple days and Pidge is still coughing. Not a _lot,_ not frequently, but it's persisted this long and she's beginning to think maybe she should've gone to Coran after all. She sniffed an alien plant, after all. Probably not her brightest moment.

But then, he didn't say there was anything particularly dangerous in that jungle, and he usually _loves_ to ramble about weird scary alien stuff, so, y'know. She probably won't die. And besides, they're busy. Weird alien allergies will have to wait.

Except one night she wakes up to cough and she swears she coughs _up_ something, so she fumbles for the light switch and finds a couple of bright white and red petals in her lap. That is _definitely_ not from allergies.

She grabs the petals and kicks free of her blankets, and slips out of her room. They've updated the castle databases since this journey started and if she can't find anything there, she can always do chemical analysis on the petals.

And then, if she _needs_ to, she can tell Coran.

She starts by searching the database for flora found on the planet the outpost was on, but nothing even close to the heart-shaped flower she remembers comes up. She expands her search to the system, but still nothing comes up.

And that's really weird, because they have the data from the civilization that used to be there, and it only collapsed a couple centuries ago. Either those people never once recorded the existence of the flower or they never discovered it at all—or it came to the planet after their downfall.

She expands the search to the galaxy, then the local quadrant, and finally something comes up. Though frankly, once she skims the short database entry on it, she wishes she hadn't looked at all.

It's not a proper flower; rather, it's a semi-telepathic fungus, which is horrifying enough. But it attracts its victims—its _hosts_ —by releasing a smell catered specifically to any nearby sentient creatures, and when they approach for a sniff, it releases its spores, which are then inhaled—

She has to stop reading a moment and breathe deeply as nausea threatens to overtake her. She doesn't know for _sure_ it's the same flower as she found, or that this information is accurate, and she definitely saw something about a cure further down the page. She opens her eyes and forces herself to keep reading.

The fungus incubates inside its host, spreading until it reaches the brain. First it affects mood, emotions. Then decisions. Then it compels its host to seek out the nearest location—or planet—with viable conditions and... die there.

It has many names across the universe, all translated for maximum impact as she reads: Crashflower, Heartvine, Nausea-flower, Falling Star. Desperate Desire. Deathseeker's Heart. But on its planet of origin, it's known simply as the pining-plant.

All of this, Pidge decides, is complete bullshit. Mind-reading fungus is already a stretch, but a flower that causes suicide by smelling like something you're pining for? Definitely bullshit.

And she seriously resents the implication that she's _pining_ for _Lance._ It's just a dumb crush.

Of course, she also resents the implication that there are flowers growing inside her, but she _did_ just cough up a couple of petals. Then again, maybe they got stuck to her armor and just kinda traveled onto her bed or something? Maybe she just didn't notice until now? She _does_ have a tendency to stumble into bed half-asleep in the dark, it'd be easy to not notice a couple of little petals. Hell, maybe she breathed them in when she smelled the damn flowers and just now coughed them back up, or something. Maybe that was what was _making_ her cough. Never mind the heavy feeling in her lungs.

Yeah, it's definitely gotta be... one of those things. And anyway, it's the middle of the night, and she's tired. Probably overtired. She's just got a cold or something, and it'll go away on its own in a couple days, and the best thing she can do for herself right now is just to go back to bed.

Yeah.

Definitely no freaky alien shit going on here.

She closes out of the database with a yawn and a cough—haha no that isn't a new petal in her hand, it was already there, _now they're in the trash haha what petals_ —and heads back to bed.

* * *

The petals keep coming no matter how firmly Pidge tries to ignore them. She does consider telling someone, once—but what would she say? "Hey, sorry I didn't tell you sooner, but I've been infected by some alien fungus or something and it might be in my brain. Like, telepathically and literally. NBD."

Yeah, no.

Maybe if she ignores it hard enough it'll go away on its own. She never did read the cure section of that database entry, but sooner or later her immune system will kick in and get rid of it on its own. It has for everything else so far. And if it doesn't, well, she's not gonna _tell_ anyone, so she supposes the least embarrassing option is to just go down with this ship.

Hopefully not literally.

The team will be fine without her. No one's commented on her coughing or anything so they probably don't care, anyway. Not even Lance.

* * *

Lance isn't an idiot.

He'll admit, privately, that a lot of stuff happens out here that he doesn't understand. And that's fine! He's in space, fighting an alien war! He's adaptable, and anyway, fake it till you make it, right?

But he's _not_ an idiot, and he _knows_ there's something wrong with Pidge.

For one thing, she's been really pale lately. Paler than usual. And she keeps coughing—coughing into her hand and then shoving her hand into her pocket like she's got a secret handkerchief or something. He remembers that the coughing started on that mission a couple weeks back, and that she never did check in with Coran after.

But more than that, she just... hasn't been acting like herself. She's quieter, grimmer. She still grins at him when he does something stupid but it doesn't linger like it used to. There's some sort of _energy_ to her that's just _gone._

Even her bright brown eyes seem duller now.

But every "Are you okay?" he asks gets brushed off with an "I'm fine, Lance." Then she'll walk away. Unless she was doing something really important before he asked, in which case she'll turn away and pretend like she isn't ignoring him.

She used to pretend to ignore him, sure, but this is completely different, and it hurts. So yeah, there's definitely something wrong with Pidge.

And, well. She can take care of herself. Maybe he'll tease but he's never doubted she could take over the universe single-handedly if she really put her mind to it. But because he likes and respects her and maybe has an inkling of a feeling he's reluctant to call a crush—she is not at _all_ his type and they both know that so it's never going to happen and he needs to stop thinking about this right now—he's going to just… double check. Just to soothe his own worries.

So, finally, he goes to Coran.

"You're the expert on alien diseases and stuff, Coran," he says as he saunters onto the bridge. "I have a question."

From the look on Coran's face, maybe that wasn't the best way to start this conversation. "You haven't caught anything, have you? The castle's decontamination fields should have removed anything dangerous from our latest supply run, but then, it _has_ been ten thousand years—"

"Coran!" he interrupts before the guy goes on a tangent and Lance learns more than he ever wanted to about all the nasty diseases they could catch from a crate of this berry or that root. "It's not me, it's Pidge."

"Ah." Coran tugs his mustache. "Keith has informed me it's just a cold. Commonplace for your species, I understand."

"Yeahhh don't listen to Keith, he doesn't know what he's talking about," Lance says. "If it was just a cold she wouldn't be so secretive about it. It's definitely something else."

"You know," Coran points out, "due to our physiological differences, it's entirely possible the same disease will have completely different symptoms for her than for Allura and I."

...Woops. "Um. I didn't think of that." Shit, what else can he do? It's not like she'd know either, probably, if it's an alien disease. This was kind of his only shot. Oh god, what if she just gets sicker? What is he gonna do?

"Now, don't panic!" Coran says quickly. "That's not to say we can't try! Come along, now."

He leads the way off the bridge, and Lance follows, jamming his hands in his pockets self-consciously. He kinda feels like it's not his place to be this worried. But is it worth jeopardizing their friendship to make sure she's okay? Totally.

"Now then," Coran says. "Tell me what you know."

"Well, uh. She started coughing on a mission. The one with that jungle terminal." He casts his mind back. "But she didn't look sick yet when she came back, it was just a cough."

"Anything unusual about that mission? Any notable interactions with the local flora or fauna?"

Lance stops stock still. "Yes! She said there was a flower that smelled like me."

Coran stops stock still, too, and fixes him with an unnerving look. "A flower? Are you sure?"

"Yeah," Lance says nervously. "She took her helmet off for a bit but I heard her sneeze, and then when she put it back on she said there was a flower that smelled like me. Then she said it smelled like dirty socks or something. But she was just dragging me, I _know_ I don't smell like dirty socks." Wait, does he? He tries to sniff his shirt surreptitiously. Nope, not socks.

Coran is frozen, though. He doesn't even ask what "dragging" means.

"Coran?" Lance waves a hand in his face. "D'you know what it is?"

"...Unfortunately," Coran responds, which is a fucking terrible sign, and then sets off at an outright run down the hall. Lance sprints to catch up.

"What is it?! Is it bad?!" he asks.

"We called it Hanahaki," Coran puffs, skidding around a corner and into the archives. "And it's very, _very_ bad."

"Shit." Lance follows him up to a terminal and watches him type in rapid Altean. Some kind of encyclopedia entry pops up with a picture of a red and white heart-shaped flower. His eyes slide over the Altean text without catching more than a word in ten; when he glances over, Coran is staring intently at it, face grim.

"What's gonna happen to her?" he asks, suddenly feeling small. In response, Coran hits a key, and the entry refreshes in English.

Lance's heart sinks lower and lower as he skims down the page. Coran was right: it's _extremely_ bad.

"How do we... what do we do?" he asks, eyes fixed on the screen. "How do we cure her?"

Coran scrolls down the entry a little. "There are a couple of options," he says quietly. "One, the healing pods are equipped to simply remove the fungus, but it can cause... damage."

Lance swallows. "Damage?"

"Memory loss is common," Coran clarifies. Shit.

"What else? What other options are there?"

"There is... one more," he says. "Certain chemicals are toxic to it that in many creatures control feelings of joy, love, and so on. A surge of those chemicals _could_ safely eliminate the fungus, but we would have to make sure they're not toxic to her as well."

Lance squints at the screen; the chemical names don't translate, apparently, or maybe he just has no fucking clue what they are. Maybe both.

"How do we do that?" he asks.

"...The pods could scan her biochemistry and determine their safety!" Coran says, perking up, and the tension in Lance's limbs leaves him so fast he almost crumples to the floor.

"So we just have to get her down here and into a pod," he breathes. "Easy peasy."

"It may not be _quite_ so easy. The fungus may prompt her to resist, if it's gotten that far," Coran says.

"I'll take physically dragging Pidge through the castle over watching her die any day," Lance declares. "Leave it to me."

"Be cautious!" Coran warns, but Lance is already heading out the door.

Pidge usually isn't a hard person to find. She's small, yeah, and has a habit of wedging herself into nooks or inadvertently hiding under large pieces of technology. But she's predictable, usually, so Lance heads towards the most obvious location: the hangar. He swings by her room on the way.

"Pidge?" He knocks on the door. "You in?"

There's no response. He opens the door though just to be sure, and finds a lot of junk but no Pidge.

The floor is strewn with petals, though, and his heart skips a beat. They look just like the flower Coran showed him—but isn't it growing _inside_ her? Why are they all over—the coughing. She hasn't been coughing into a handkerchief, she's been _coughing up petals,_ shit. And there's so many. Why didn't she say anything? Why couldn't he have done this sooner?

He hurries on.

The hangar is empty, too—at least, Pidge isn't there. Hunk is, and he waves when Lance walks in.

"Have you seen Pidge?" Lance asks first thing, and Hunk's face falls a bit. "Sorry, it's urgent, I'll explain later."

"Oh. Um, she left a little while ago. Is everything okay?"

"Uhh." Lance debates lying, but hey, two is better than one, right? "Yeah, no, she's really sick and needs to get to a pod ASAP."

"Oh." Hunk's face falls further. "I mean, I knew she was kinda off, but... she's really sick?"

"Yeah." Lance sucks in a breath and decides that's enough info for the moment. "Help me find her?"

"Yeah, of course." Hunk puts down the tool in his hand and follows him out.

They split up at the common room, Hunk heading towards the dining room and Lance back up to the bridge. He peers into every door (and nook) along the way, calling softly, but finds only, as is typical in the castle, a lot of dust and darkness.

Then he finds a petal in the hallway. And another, and another. A trail that leads up to the bridge.

And then the castle's announcement system crackles to life.

"Paladins?" Allura asks. "Can someone come up to the bridge, please?"

She sounds... not quite frightened. Uncertain, maybe, and alarmed. Lance's heart sinks to his toes.

"What's going on!?" he shouts vaguely upward, hoping the system will somehow pick it up.

"It's Pidge," Allura responds, or maybe she’s just following up and didn’t hear him. It doesn’t matter; Lance is off running.

The trip up to the bridge is the longest of his life. His heartbeat pounds in his ears and his feet against the floor but otherwise there is only deathly silence, punctuated by his harsh breathing. The lights of the castle are cold and hard, the hallways unforgiving and strewn with petals. He slips on them and slams hard into the door of the bridge, yelling and clutching his nose as it finally slides open.

Allura is where she always is, standing under the crystal. She's holding Pidge at arm's length, gripping her wrist to aim the bayard there away. There are bright petals everywhere.

"PIDGE!" Lance screams.

Pidge's head turns slowly. Her skin has a sickly green hue; her eyes are empty. Another petal drips from her lips—bloody, shit, the red isn't just the color of the petals, it's _blood._

"Pidge," he repeats, approaching quickly and almost slipping on the petals again. Shit, it's gotten further than they thought. Shit, shit, shit. "Pidge, can you hear me?" Why didn't he do this sooner!?

Pidge doesn't answer. He grips her arm, careful not to stand in front of her bayard.

"Pidge, I'm sorry, shit." They're gonna have to do the surgery after all, probably. No time to wait for tests. "Pidge, come on, put the bayard down!"

She blinks at him slowly.

"I _know_ you're in there," he says desperately. "Come on, Pidge. It's me. It's Lance."

"Lance?" Allura asks, but he doesn't so much as glance at her.

"Pidge, come on," he repeats softly.

She shifts, then, turning to face him, and for a moment his heart soars. Allura lets go of her, and Pidge lets her step away.

And then swings her bayard at him.

He barely catches her arm in time, straining against her—so much force for such small arms. He was already shaking but it's only worse now.

"Pidge!" He's crying now, shit. "Come _on,_ Pidge, you don't wanna do this. Don't do this to me."

She just looks at him.

"Pidge, please," he all but sobs. "Come on. I love you, don't do this."

The words had slipped out of him before he even registered what he was saying, but something seems to flicker in her eyes, and his own widen. How could that get through to her? Coran had said it was chemicals that could cure her—ones that _cause happiness in some creatures,_ but how could this—?

Pining-plant. It's called the _pining-plant._

"Pidge—I love you!" he blurts. "I know you love me too. Wake up, Pidge."

Her arms slacken, just slightly. But it's not enough. The flicker in her eyes doesn't fill the emptiness. What else can he do?

He can only think of one thing.

He lets go of her arms to cup her face, and he kisses her.

Her lips taste like iron; her bayard slices into his side, a glancing blow, but he doesn't dare pull away, not yet. He tilts her head, pressing in, bracing for a second attack.

It doesn't come.

When he does pull away, her eyes are just as bright and beautiful as they used to be, blinking slowly as they finally focus on him.

A sob works its way up his throat, and he pulls her close and chokes into her hair, shaking. She doesn't move, at first, but slowly both her hands—empty—creep across his back.

"Lance?" she says, groggily, and he gasps and holds her tighter.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, it's me. You're gonna be okay now. It's okay."

She's quiet for a moment, but her fingers curl into his jacket.

"I'm an idiot," she grumbles finally, and he half-laughs, half-sobs.

Then Allura whispers, " _Hanahaki_ ," and he starts. He'd forgotten she was there. When he looks up, he finds the rest of the team has shown up too.

"Um, yeah," he says. "Coran and I figured it out."

"Good job," she says slowly. And then, " _Pidge_."

Pidge grumbles something unintelligible into Lance's chest. For some reason this is incredibly endearing, even though she's probably getting blood on his shirt.

 _Love is weird,_ Lance thinks, and holds her tighter.

* * *

"She's fungus free!" Coran declares later that day. "Completely cured, and no ill effects! She'll be out any moment now."

Lance brushes his fingers against the surface of the pod, having just gotten out of one himself. "Are you _sure?_ "

"Absolutely," Coran says. Shiro pats his shoulder and Lance swears he hears Hunk cooing in the background. He shoots them a glare over his shoulder.

And then the pod swishes open and he's scrambling to catch Pidge as she stumbles out. She clings to his arms to steady herself and his heart swells.

"Falling for me again, huh?" he asks, and she groans loudly.

"Let me go, I'm getting back in the pod," she says, and he laughs. He doesn't let go, and neither does she.

**Author's Note:**

> im [maternalcube](http://maternalcube.tumblr.com/)


End file.
